


loyalty

by kalypsobean



Category: Reign (TV)
Genre: Aftermath, Gen, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-23
Updated: 2014-12-23
Packaged: 2018-03-03 02:06:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2834231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kalypsobean/pseuds/kalypsobean
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>when you're friends even when you're not friends because that's how close you once were.</p>
            </blockquote>





	loyalty

**Author's Note:**

  * For [caras_galadhon (Galadriel)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Galadriel/gifts).



> Happy Holidays to Galadriel! I hope you like your gift. xx

i.

It is far too easy for him to grab Mary's arm and haul her to somewhere safe, dark and quiet, where it's just the two of them.

"You shouldn't be walking alone, Mary, not now," he says. She wrests her arm from him and steps back, again, again, until she's pressed against the wall, visibly pale.

"You used to trust me," he says. "You used to talk to me."

"You used to be my friend," she says, and something about her voice, the way she stands so closed in on herself, shatters the part of him that still loves her.

 

ii.

She's off with Condé, again, and he rides next to Francis.

"She isn't... we don't, we aren't like that anymore." Francis says it bitterly, as if the words slice into his skin and draw his heart's blood. "She blames me for it."

"For what?" he says.

"She didn't tell you? Bash, those men, the guards weren't in time." His hands tighten on the reins and the horse shies, rears, and it takes a moment for Bash to understand, as long as it takes Francis to calm the mare, to stop.

"Whenever she speaks, now, I swear, I hear my mother."

 

iii.

He sees it so clearly now; Mary plays the perfect Queen. She smiles in the right directions and at the right times, her eyes as flat and cold as a coin; she never touches anyone, and her skin is covered up to her face, her gown an altered cast-off of Catherine's.

She is the opposite to Francis, like dark to light, reserve to passion, yet he feels it now, how imbalanced it is between them, disconnected.

His place is between them, or it was; Condé stands amid a crowd of restless petitioners, and he is at the King's right hand.


End file.
